INTERPERSONAL RELATIONS AND GROUP PROCESSES
If–Then Contingencies and the Differential Effects of the Availability of an
Attractive Alternative on Relationship Maintenance for Men and Women
John E. Lydon, Danielle Menzies-Toman, and
Kimberly Burton
Chris Bell
York University
McGill University
In 7 experiments, the causal effects of the availability of an attractive alternative (AA) relationship
partner on current relationship thoughts and intentions were tested using confederates, mental simulations, and virtual reality. Men behaved consistent with traditional relationship-commitment theories,
showing decreased willingness to tolerate their partner’s transgressions after the availability of an AA
was made salient. However, consistent with a motivated cognition approach to commitment and work on
relational self-construals, women increased their tolerance when presented with the relationship threat of
an alternative. Word-fragment and lexical decision data suggested that AAs may activate threat for
women, and their ability to dampen threat accessibility is associated with prorelationship responses.
Finally, this “if relationship is threatened, then defend the relationship” contingency was induced in men
with an implementation intention induction.
Keywords: commitment, gender, close relationships, social cognition
frequency with which celebrities tend to have their relationships
dissolve may be due, in no small part, to the “occupational hazard” of
often being confronted with attractive alternatives.
Consistent with theory, research demonstrates correlations between the perceived availability of alternatives and relationship
commitment (Jemmott, Ashby, & Lindenfeld, 1989). For example,
the comparison level for alternatives (i.e., the availability and
attractiveness of an alternative) is predictive of the rate of relationship breakup (Felmlee, Sprecher, & Bassin, 1990; J. A. Simpson, 1987). In essence, the availability of attractive alternatives is
thought to reduce relationship commitment and dependency and
thereby increase the risk of relationship dissolution (Drigotas &
Rusbult, 1992; Rusbult & Buunk, 1993). However, we are unaware of any research that has experimentally manipulated the
availability of alternatives and examined its effects on commitment and commitment-related behaviors.1
The seemingly straightforward hypothesis outlined above is that
the availability of alternatives should decrease commitment. However, a motivated-cognition approach to close relationships suggests otherwise (Lydon, Burton, & Menzies-Toman, 2005). Commitment is a motivational construct in that it motivates people to
see, think, and act in ways that help to sustain their romantic
relationships. Commitment is associated with perceiving bad behaviors by a partner as less severe than impartial observers perceive the same behaviors (Menzies-Toman & Lydon, 2005), with
making benign attributions for poor behavior (Finkel, Rusbult,
Media reports suggest that the rich and famous trade relationship partners at a rate that is difficult for the average person to
fathom. Popular accounts suggest that this is due to a gulf in values
between cultural superstars and ordinary folk, with celebrities
being thought of as “just different kinds of people.” However, a
social psychological analysis takes into account the fact that celebrities, more than any other group, are besieged by the temptations of attractive alternative relationship partners.
All of the major social psychological theories of commitment
predict that the availability of an attractive alternative relationship
partner should have a negative impact on commitment and relationship survival because it is in one’s rational self-interest to pursue one’s
attraction to the alternative. The social exchange model of cohesiveness (Levinger, 1965, 1976), the investment model of commitment
(Rusbult, 1980, 1983), and M. P. Johnson’s (1991) commitment
framework have all emphasized the lack of attractive alternatives as a
key factor in the maintenance of romantic relationships. Therefore, the
John E. Lydon, Danielle Menzies-Toman, and Kimberly Burton, Department of Psychology, McGill University, Montreal, Quebec, Canada;
Chris Bell, Department of Organizational Behavior/Industrial Relations,
Schulich School of Business, York University, Toronto, Ontario, Canada.
This research was supported by grants and fellowships from the Social
Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada. Many undergraduates contributed to these studies. In particular, we gratefully acknowledge
Sara Hopper, Natalie Hrycay, Stephanie Archambault, Matt Grady, Julie
Cloutier, Chris Miners, and Ian Mahar.
Correspondence concerning this article should be addressed to John E.
Lydon, Department of Psychology, McGill University, 1205 Dr. Penfield
Avenue, Montreal, Quebec H3A 1B1, Canada. E-mail: john.lydon@mcgill.ca
1
In a role-playing experiment, individuals expected the attractiveness of
an alternative to influence the protagonist’s commitment (Rusbult, 1980).
Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 2008, Vol. 95, No. 1, 50 – 65
Copyright 2008 by the American Psychological Association 0022-3514/08/$12.00
DOI: 10.1037/0022-3514.95.1.50
50
IF–THENS AND THE AVAILABILITY OF ALTERNATIVES
Kumashiro, & Hannon, 2002), and with the ability to be tolerant
and forgiving of such poor behavior (termed accommodation;
Rusbult, Verette, Whitney, Slovik, & Lipkus, 1991). Arguably,
one of the most important insights in relationship-commitment
research in the past 20 years is that the arrow between relationship
threats and commitment is bidirectional (Lydon, 1999). This
means that just as the threat of attractive alternatives can undermine commitment and the viability of a relationship, commitment
may motivate individuals to minimize such threats to maintain and
protect the relationship.
A logical question then arises: “How might one minimize the
threat of an attractive alternative?” One strategy is to simply ignore
the alternative (Miller, 1997). Another strategy is to devalue, or
underrate, the attractiveness of the alternative (D. J. Johnson &
Rusbult, 1989; Simpson, Gangestad, & Lerma, 1990), although
those in dating relationships are less successful at devaluation
when they are led to believe that the alternative is attracted to them
(Lydon, Meana, Sepinwall, Richards, & Mayman, 1999).
Now imagine a real-world interaction with an attractive alternative,
rather than the casual perusal of a picture and a file folder. The
attractive person is showing a great interest in you, maintaining eye
contact, and maybe even being a bit flirtatious. The threat is strong. In
contrast with the laboratory, in the real world, people may not have
the opportunity to stop for a few minutes and consciously reflect on
the situation in order to make a deliberate judgment of devaluation.
Instead, the threat may be experienced quickly and implicitly.
We theorize that in the face of a strong, implicit relationship
threat posed by the availability of an attractive alternative, commitment alone may not be sufficient to ward off the threat. We
hypothesize that, instead, individuals need to have learned and
developed strong commitment-motivated “if–then” contingencies
in the form of: “If an attractive alternative approaches me, then I
will protect my relationship.”
Our proposition is derived from Mischel and Shoda’s (1995)
cognitive-affective personality system. The cognitive-affective
personality system model proposes that individuals have learned
and have available in memory if–then contingencies in the form of
“If I am in situation X, then I will respond with behavior Y.” To
predict an individual’s behavioral response to a situation, one must
consider the cognitive-affective mediating units activated by the
situation, such as the encoding of the situation, the goals and
values implicated, and the self-regulatory strategies learned and
accessible in the situation. Moreover, one needs to recognize that
these units are not independent of each other so that the activation
of a particular set of goals and values may correspond with a
particular encoding of the situation, and the two units may contribute to the eliciting of an associated behavioral response.
The situation of encountering an attractive alternative can be
encoded in an egoistic self-interested manner consistent with exchange theories (Blau, 1964; Homans, 1961). Consequently, the
situation should decrease commitment and commitment-related
behaviors. However, taking a motivated-cognition approach, we
see that the same situation can be encoded as a threat to one’s
relationship, conjuring up the values associated with the relationship and thereby eliciting behaviors that protect and enhance the
relationship. Just as there are stable individual differences in
personality signatures, we expect that there are stable individual
differences in relationship signatures elicited by a situation such as
the availability of an attractive alternative.
51
What may account for stable individual differences in relationship signatures? Theory and research suggest that men and women
should differ in response to the availability of an attractive alternative. Men are theorized to have a more individualistic sense of
self that is differentiated from others, whereas women are theorized to have more interdependent self-construals (Cross, Morris,
& Gore, 2002; Josephs, Markus, & Tafarodi, 1992). Women also
tend to be more communal and are more likely to define themselves in terms of their relationships with others (Helgeson, 1994;
Guimond, Chatard, Martinot, Crisp, & Redersdorff, 2006). An
extensive program of research has shown that women have higher
relationally interdependent self-construals (RISCs) and that such
self-construals predict a wide range of relationship-enhancing behaviors, such as disclosure, responsiveness, and trust (Cross, Bacon, & Morris, 2000). Moreover, when receiving relationship
primes, women are more willing to make benign attributions for
their partner’s bad behavior, and the effect is specific to women
high on the RISC. Women low on the RISC and men who are
similarly low on the RISC do not show this same effect of
relationship-priming on benign attributions (Lydon et al., 2005).
Finally, previous studies have indicated that psychological femininity and relationship centrality are positive correlates of accommodation (Agnew, Van Lange, Rusbult, & Langston, 1998; Kilpatrick, Bissonnette, & Rusbult, 2002) and that self-centeredness is
a negative correlate (Campbell & Foster, 2002).
Therefore, we expect men to respond to relationship alternatives
in a more individualistic, self-interested manner, whereas women
should respond in a more relational manner. We anticipate that
men will become less motivated to defend and protect their relationships when faced with an attractive alternative but that an
attractive alternative will activate a sense of relationship threat and
commitment for women, leading them to increase their willingness
to defend and protect their relationships.
Note that a weaker form of the motivated-cognition hypothesis is
that women will maintain their commitment, and related behaviors
will remain stable. However, successfully warding off threats can
strengthen a relationship (Brehm, 1985; Murray & Holmes, 1993).
From a dissonance perspective, commitment should escalate when
one perceives that an appealing alternative has been freely sacrificed
(Brickman, 1987). Thus, the strong test of the motivated-cognition
approach is that a person will engage in even greater commitmentrelated behaviors in response to the availability of alternatives.
Given this theoretical background, we first sought to examine
whether men and women differ in the extent to which an attractive
alternative cognitively and behaviorally activates a sense of threat and
commitment. If threat and commitment are not activated, then it is
unlikely that there will be commitment-related relationship-protection
behaviors. We expected that an available alternative would activate
thoughts of threat and commitment for women but not for men
(Hypothesis 1). In a first study, we used a mental simulation procedure whereby participants visualized an interaction with someone of
the same sex versus an attractive person of the opposite sex. We then
used word-fragment completions to explore possible gender differences in the cognitive activation of threat and commitment.
In Study 2, to examine behavioral differences between men and
women in response to an attractive alternative, we presented intimates with images of attractive opposite-sex targets in virtual
reality and assessed the distance at which participants placed the
attractive others relative to neutral images. We hypothesized that
52
LYDON, MENZIES-TOMAN, BURTON, AND BELL
in a neutral, decontextualized control condition, we would not
obtain gender differences but that in a relationship context, women
would avoid the attractive target by moving his image further away
(Hypothesis 2). We created a relationship context by having some
participants complete a short relationships questionnaire within a
larger package of self and personality questionnaires.
In Studies 3–5, we conducted laboratory experiments in which
we manipulated information regarding the relationship status of an
attractive opposite-sex confederate and examined what effect this
had on the commitment-related relationship-protective response of
accommodation (Rusbult et al., 1991), or one’s willingness to
tolerate a romantic partner’s transgression by responding in a way
that helps to sustain, rather than undermine, the stability of the
relationship. Accommodation has been examined in numerous
studies on commitment, and it has been shown to predict actual
relationship behavior (Rusbult et al., 1991) and relationship longevity (Amodio & Showers, 2005).
In Study 3, we hypothesized that men would show a decrease in the
willingness to accommodate their dating partners’ transgressions after
an interaction with an available attractive alternative (Hypothesis 3).
In contrast, in Studies 4 and 5, we hypothesized that women would
increase their willingness to accommodate in response to the same
threat (Hypothesis 4). In Study 4, we also explored whether or not the
dominance versus warmth of the confederate would moderate women’s responses, as it has been theorized that these interpersonal orientations may affect the perceived attractiveness of available alternatives (Kenrick, Neuberg, Zierk, & Krones, 1994; Fletcher, Tither,
O’Loughlin, Friesen, & Overall, 2004; Li & Kenrick, 2006). One
possible reason why women might increase their accommodation is
guilt elicited by their attraction to an alternative that violates ought
standards. Therefore, in Study 5, we examined whether or not feelings
of guilt aroused by the interaction would mediate accommodation
responses.
In Study 6, using the same paradigm as in Studies 3–5, we added
a lexical decision task to assess the cognitive accessibility of
commitment and threat. We examined correlations between these
accessibility measures and accommodation for women in the
available-alternative condition, compared with those in a noconfederate control condition. We also included a premeasure of
self-reported commitment. On the basis of previous research, we
expected that the self-report measure of commitment would predict accommodation in the control condition (Hypothesis 5). In
line with our theorizing, we expected that women’s ability to
regulate and dampen the cognitive accessibility of threat when
faced with the confederate would be associated with greater accommodation (Hypothesis 6). We also expected that the implicit
accessibility of commitment would predict accommodation, above
and beyond the explicit self-report measure of relationship commitment (Hypothesis 7). In addition, we explored the possibility
that the accessibility of commitment may be more strongly associated with accommodation in the threat (available-alternative)
condition than in the control condition.
Finally, we reasoned that, if the difference between male and
female responses is due, at least in part, to differences in the
encoding of the attractive alternative as a relationship threat that
then activates relationship-protection mechanisms, then it should
be possible to train men to respond in a fashion similar to that of
women. Drawing on theory and research on implementation intentions (Gollwitzer, 1999), in Study 7, we hypothesized that
teaching men if–then contingencies in the form of “When I am in
situation X, I will engage in behavior Y” would be effective at
inducing relationship-protective responses. Our rationale was that
by forming the contingencies a priori, the individual’s response
would be automatically cued by the situation, allowing him to act
immediately, without needing to question and formulate an appropriate response. This would be consistent with previous research
finding, for example, that students who were equally committed to
the goal of writing an essay about Christmas Eve varied substantially in their completion of the essay as a function of having
formed or not formed an implementation intention such as “On
December 26, in the morning, I will go to my desk and write the
essay.” We theorized that implementation intentions would provide men with an if–then contingency that would signal to them
that the situation with an attractive alternative is actually a relationship threat that should be addressed rather than a situation to be
experienced in an egoistic, independent-self manner.
Study 1
As previously stated, the purpose of our first study was to
examine whether men and women differ in the extent to which an
attractive alternative cognitively activates a sense of threat and
commitment. A mental simulation procedure was used whereby
participants visualized an interaction with a peer of the opposite
sex versus a peer of the same sex (control condition). In a subsequent, ostensible filler task, participants completed word fragments, some of which could be completed as threat words and
others that could be completed as commitment words. We hypothesized that men and women in the experimental condition would
differ in their implicit encoding of the situation as indicated by
their word-fragment completions.
Method
Participants
Three hundred heterosexual male and female participants (147 men
and 153 women) who were on average 22.2 years of age (SD ⫽ 3.02)
and who were all involved in a romantic relationship (M duration ⫽
21.3 months; SD ⫽ 18.7) were recruited from both the McGill
University campus and surrounding areas of Montreal (Quebec, Canada) for a study ostensibly regarding their ability to visualize social
situations. Participants kindly agreed to take part in the study without
compensation. These participants were randomly assigned to conditions whereby 100 visualized an interaction with an attractive alternative who asked for the participant’s phone number (unambiguous
threat condition), 101 visualized an interaction with an attractive
alternative who made a passing reference to his/her dating partner
(ambiguous threat condition), and 99 visualized an interaction with a
member of the same sex (control condition).
Procedure
Upon completion of the informed-consent form, participants
were presented with the following instructions:
In the first part of this survey you will be given a short passage to read.
We ask that you try to imagine the scenario that it describes as vividly
as you possibly can. The main character in the passage is YOU and we
IF–THENS AND THE AVAILABILITY OF ALTERNATIVES
53
Visualization procedure. In the unambiguous threat condition,
the participant visualized an interaction with an attractive member
of the opposite sex from one of their classes with whom they met
and struck up a conversation at a coffee shop. The interaction
ended with the attractive person offering his or her phone number
to get together at a later date to study, but the alternative made no
reference to a dating partner. In the ambiguous threat condition,
the interaction was exactly the same, except the alternative made
a passing remark in reference to their dating partner (that their
partner had not yet purchased the issue of the magazine the
participant was currently reading). In the control condition, the
interaction was identical to the unambiguous threat condition,
except that in this condition, the interaction partner was the same
sex as the participant.
Word-fragment completion task. This task consisted of 16
word fragments (six of which had possible commitment word
completions and neutral word completions, three of which had
possible threat word completions and neutral word completions,
and seven of which served as filler and control word fragments
with other/neutral word completions). Examples of the commitment word fragments included lo_al (loyal or local), de_ _ted
(devoted or deleted), and c_ _mi_ _e_ (committed or committee).
The six commitment word-fragment target completions constituted
words that have been identified by Aron and Westbay (1996) and
Fehr (1988) as closely related to commitment. The threat word
fragments consisted of words that we generated and thought to be
representative of the concept of threat: thr_ _t (threat or throat),
be_a_e (beware or became), and t_m_ _ing (tempting or tumbling).
The word completions were coded as either a hit or a miss for each
target word, with the cognitive accessibility of commitment and
threat determined by the sum of the number of hits in each
category. More specifically, the accessibility of commitment was
determined by the number of hits to the target words loyal,
devoted, attachment, committed, dedicated, and invested, whereas
the accessibility of threat was determined by the number of hits to
the target words beware, tempting, and threat.
(Gender: male vs. female) analysis of covariance (ANCOVA) was
conducted with threat-word completions as the dependent measure
and the total length of the romantic relationship, how realistic the
participant thought the scenario was, and the total number of
neutral filler words each participant completed as covariates. Although there was not a significant interaction, F(1, 293) ⫽ 2.07,
p ⫽ .15, men in the control condition (M ⫽ 1.16, SD ⫽ 0.87) and
women in the control condition (M ⫽ 1.16, SD ⫽ 0.93) completed
the same mean number of threat words, t(97) ⫽ .02, ns, but in the
experimental condition, women (M ⫽ 1.22, SD ⫽ 0.85) reported
significantly more threat words than did men (M ⫽ 0.90, SD ⫽
0.83), t(199) ⫽ 2.70, p ⬍ .01, effect size r ⫽ .19.
This same gender difference was obtained for the activation of
commitment when the same analysis was conducted using commitment word fragments as the dependent measure. The overall
main effects for gender and condition were significant, Fs(1,
293) ⫽ 4.55 and 4.53, ps ⬍ .05, and the interaction was not, F ⬍
1. In particular, there was not a significant gender difference
between men (M ⫽ 1.55, SD ⫽ 1.17) and women (M ⫽ 1.88,
SD ⫽ 1.24) in the control condition, t(97) ⫽ 1.36, ns, but there was
a significant difference between men (M ⫽ 1.78, SD ⫽ 1.09) and
women (M ⫽ 2.24, SD ⫽ 1.45) in the experimental threat condition, t(199) ⫽ 2.58, p ⬍ .05, effect size r ⫽ .18, such that women
also completed more commitment word fragments.
To examine whether women in the threat condition experienced
greater overall activation of threat and commitment, we standardized scores for the threat and commitment activation measures and
then conducted a repeated-measures analysis of covariance
(ANCOVA) contrasting women in the threat condition with
women in the control condition and men in both conditions.
Women in the threat condition experienced greater overall activation of threat and commitment compared with the other three
groups, F(1, 296) ⫽ 7.85, r ⫽ .16, p ⬍ .01.
The results of Study 1 provided preliminary evidence consistent
with our theorizing that men and women would construe an
interaction with an attractive alternative in different ways. Women
and men did not differ at all in the activation of threat words in the
control condition, but they differed significantly in the experimental condition. The same gender difference in the experimental
condition was obtained for commitment words, although the nonsignificant difference in the control condition was not as close to
zero as it was with threat words. This hints at the possibility that
commitment may be more chronically accessible for women than
for men across situations.
Although we do not want to overstate these results, the purpose of
this study was to investigate whether or not there is any empirical
basis to suggest that men and women will construe an experimental
manipulation of the availability of an attractive alternative in different
ways. To the extent that we overestimate the effects of Study 1, we
should then have more difficulty obtaining differences in relationshipprotecting behavior such as accommodation.
Results
Study 2
Because we found no differences between the unambiguous and
ambiguous threat conditions in the frequency of either threat or
commitment word-fragment completions, we collapsed across
these two conditions and compared both of these threat conditions
with the control condition. A 2 (Condition: threat vs. control) ⫻ 2
Whereas in Study 1, we examined cognitive activation when
imagining an interaction with an attractive alternative, in Study 2,
we sought to demonstrate gender differences in behavior using a
virtual reality paradigm. Men and women in intimate relationships
manipulated objects in virtual reality. Because of the artificiality of
ask that you try to visualize the scenario as if the events described
were really happening. After you read the passage you will be asked
to complete some word puzzles. This is designed to distract your
attention from the passage that you read. After you complete the word
puzzles you will be asked how vividly you recall the scenario that you
read. This is why it is very important that you try to imagine the
scenario as best as possible.
These instructions were used as a cover story for the use of word
fragments as a dependent measure. Participants then read the
assigned visualization, completed commitment and threat word
fragments, and then answered various questions regarding their
ability to visualize the scenario.
Materials
LYDON, MENZIES-TOMAN, BURTON, AND BELL
54
the environment and the remoteness of the images, we reasoned
that we needed to create some subtle cues providing a relationship
context for the virtual reality task. Therefore, we had participants
manipulate images either in a neutral, decontextualized control
condition or in a relationship-contextualized prime condition. The
hypothesis was that in a relationship context, women would avoid
the attractive alternative by moving the image further away relative to other objects (e.g., a giraffe, basket of fruit).
Method
explains that the participant’s task is to create an arrangement with
which he or she is satisfied by adjusting the distances of the images
using the joystick. Three of the images are of a control nature, in
that they are photographs of the nonhuman subjects: a giraffe, a
mountain, and some tree fruit. The remaining image is a photograph of an age-appropriate, attractive person of the participant’s
preferred sex. It is this image that is thought to represent an
attractive alternative. Participants are able to adjust the distances of
each image individually, using the joystick to push them away or
pull them closer. When they report being satisfied with their
arrangements, the distances are saved in virtual units.
Participants
Fifty-eight women and 57 men, ranging in age from 17 to 50
years (M ⫽ 26 years), who were involved in heterosexual relationships at the time of the study (M relationship length ⫽ 53
months) were tested. Participants agreed to take part in a study
about the use of virtual reality. They were recruited from the
undergraduate population of McGill University, the Continuing
Education program of the university, a shopping mall in the
downtown area of Montreal, as well from the general Englishspeaking population of the city, using an advertisement placed in
a prominent local English-language newspaper.
Participants were told that the purpose of the study was to
examine the ease of use of virtual reality with regard to its
employment in future studies. Participants were led to believe that
the experimenters were interested in their experiences with the
virtual reality task, given that virtual reality in research was relatively new. They were not aware that the study concerned romantic
relationships.
Materials
Prime. Participants completed a 14-item relationship-attitudes
survey that was embedded within a self and personality questionnaire, which served to cognitively activate implicit thoughts about
relationship status. They were asked to rate how they felt about
their relationship (e.g., enthusiastic, satisfied, committed). The
idea was that thinking about these questions would place participants in a relationship frame of mind so that when they were
immersed in virtual reality a few minutes later, they would react
within a relationship context. Participants randomly assigned to
not complete these questions before the virtual reality task served
as a relationship-decontextualized control group.
Virtual reality distancing task. The dependent variable, the
avoidance of an attractive alternative in virtual reality, was assessed using a distancing exercise created by Bell and Lydon
(1997). The virtual reality software-development kit used to create
this program was Sense8’s WorldToolKit, Version 2.04 (Engineering Animation). In the task, the experimenter first fits the participant with a virtual reality headset, a CyberMaxx (VictorMaxx
Technologies) head-mounted display unit, with a resolution of
180,000 pixels per square inch and an immersion factor of 56° in
the field of vision, and gives oral instructions regarding the use of
a joystick. The virtual reality program then begins by flying
participants into a black space. In this virtual environment are four
photographic images suspended in random order at the horizon, in
a semicircle around the participant. Participants are stationary but
can rotate to the right or left to view the horizon. The experimenter
Procedure
Participants took part in individual sessions of the experiment.
At the beginning of each session, they completed a short background survey with questions regarding their age and sexual preference embedded in the items. This information was later used in
the virtual reality task to select an appropriate image as an attractive alternative. So as to not lead participants to be suspicious of
the true nature of the experiment, we asked them a number of
additional demographic-type, such as their field of study or employment, the number of hours per week that they typically work,
and scales about self and personality.
Following the demographics questionnaire, we primed participants assigned to the experimental condition by having them
complete the measure of relationship attitudes. They then engaged
in the virtual reality distancing task in which the dependent variable was assessed. In the control condition, however, participants
were not primed and so completed the virtual reality distancing
task immediately following the demographics questionnaire.
Results
To compute an index of the avoidance of the attractive alternative image, we first calculated a mean control-image distance by
averaging the virtual unit distances of the three control images
from the center point of the participant. This was then subtracted
from the image distance of the attractive alternative, creating a
difference score, whereby the greater the score, the larger the
distance placed between the participant and the image of the
attractive alternative relative to the control images. A score of 0
reflects no difference between the placement of the attractive
alternative and control images.
We then performed a 2 (Condition) ⫻ 2 (Gender) ANOVA, which
revealed a significant interaction effect, F(1, 111) ⫽ 5.49, MSE ⫽
47.30, p ⫽ .02. This interaction revealed that it was only the women
in the prime condition (M ⫽ 7.01) who distanced the image of the
attractive alternative from themselves. Participants in the three other
conditions showed essentially no differences in their placement of the
images, as is reflected in their near-zero scores. The average primed
women’s distance was significantly greater than that of the women in
the control condition (M ⫽ .46), t(111) ⫽ 3.64, MSE ⫽ 47.30, r ⫽
.33, p ⬍ .01; men in the prime condition (M ⫽ .12), t(111) ⫽ 3.55,
r ⫽ .32, p ⬍ .01; and men in the control condition (M ⫽ ⫺.37),
t(111) ⫽ 4.22, r ⫽ .37, p ⬍ .01. Men in the prime condition (M ⫽ .12)
did not differ from men in the control condition (M ⫽ ⫺.37), t ⬍ 1,
IF–THENS AND THE AVAILABILITY OF ALTERNATIVES
ns. Similarly, men and women in the control condition did not differ
from each other (t ⬍ 1, ns).2
Despite the artificiality of Study 2, clear evidence was obtained
that men and women in relationships react differentially to the
presence of an attractive alternative. Women showed clear avoidance of the attractive alternative in a relationship context, and men
showed no evidence of this behavior. Given these results and the
word-fragment data from Study 1, there appears to be sufficient
evidence to suggest that men and women may respond differentially to an experimental manipulation of the availability of an
attractive alternative
Study 3
Having demonstrated that the imagined situation in Study 1 did
not activate threat and commitment for men and that even when
primed to think about their relationship, men failed to distance
themselves from the image of the attractive alternative (Study 2),
in Study 3 we created a laboratory experimental paradigm that
mimicked the mental simulation of an attractive alternative to
examine the effects of the manipulation of the availability of a
real-life attractive alternative on the relationship-protective behavior of accommodation. We anticipated that a real-life attractive
alternative would pose an even stronger threat than we previously
had been able to induce and that this paradigm would lend ecological validity to our findings.
Method
Participants
Seventy-one male participants who were all currently involved
in a heterosexual romantic relationship were recruited from the
McGill University campus to take part in a study purported to be
on reactions to conflict situations in relationships. However, the
recruitment process was such that participants believed that the
study was open to both men and women who were either single or
currently involved in a relationship, with single people reporting
on their most recent relationship. Data from 4 participants were not
usable because of procedural problems, 6 participants reported
suspicion, and 1 participant did not complete the dependent measures. The final sample consisted of 60 men who were, on average,
19 years of age (SD ⫽ 5.56) and who were involved in a romantic
relationship for a median length of 12 months (SD ⫽ 17.6).
Participants were university students who had agreed to participate
either in exchange for course credit for an introductory psychology
class or without any compensation. These participants were randomly assigned to conditions whereby 31 interacted with an attractive and available confederate of the opposite sex (threat condition) and 29 interacted with an attractive but unavailable
confederate of the opposite sex (control condition).
Procedure
The participant and a confederate (posing as another participant
scheduled for the same time slot) entered the laboratory and were
asked to sign a letter of informed consent. The experimental
conditions were manipulated by the use of a single question on the
part of the experimenter—“I’m missing a response from your
telephone interview data. Are you in a relationship?”—to which
55
the confederate either replied “No, I’m single” (available condition) or “Yes, I’m married” (unavailable condition). The confederate also wore a wedding ring in the unavailable condition. In
both conditions, the experimenter left the two alone in the room for
several minutes, having told them that she had run out of questionnaires and needed to make additional copies.
In the available condition the confederate proceeded to engage
the participant in a scripted conversation. The confederate maintained prolonged eye contact with the participant, expressed deep
interest in the conversation, and provided encouraging feedback
(such as nodding and smiling), and she flicked her hair at one
point. During the conversation, the confederate mentioned that she
had been in another experiment and said “You wouldn’t believe
what I had to do.” At that point, she laughed and gently touched
the participant. All of these elements were designed to express the
confederate’s interest in the participant, with the intention of
making the confederate seem behaviorally available (cf. EiblEibesfeldt, 1989). The experimenter listened and observed from
the other side of a one-way mirror that was almost completely
covered with poster board, and confirmed the confederate’s performance of these key behaviors. In the unavailable condition, the
female confederate did none of these things. To avoid any conversation that might be initiated by the participant, the confederate
took out an agenda and made notes for the duration of the interaction period. At the end of the interaction period, the experimenter returned and once the participant was separated from the
confederate, the study materials were distributed. Accommodation
was assessed immediately, with a one-item measure of commitment embedded in a demographic-information survey that assessed the length of the participant’s current romantic relationship,
among other things, such as age and gender.
Materials
Accommodation. The accommodation questionnaire consisted
of four scenarios that were presented in a random order. Each
scenario required that the participant imagine that his partner had
transgressed in some manner. Two low-severity transgressions
involved the following: (a) the partner being late and leaving the
participant waiting outside in the cold of winter for 20 min or (b)
the partner revealing to others an embarrassing thing that the
participant had done. The two more severe transgressions involved
the following: (a) the partner failing to hand in the participant’s
assignment for a course or (b) the partner lying that she had to
cancel a dinner date in order to study, but the participant finds her
out at a bar that night. Four possible responses were available to be
rated for each scenario, and each involved either voice (active–
constructive response), loyalty (passive– constructive response),
exit (active– destructive response), or neglect (passive– destructive
response). The participant rated on an 11-point scale how likely it
was that they would engage in each behavior (0 ⫽ not at all likely
and 10 ⫽ extremely likely). The participant’s willingness to engage
2
These results were obtained by comparing image-difference scores
(attractive alternative image ⫺ control image mean). However, we also
analyzed the data using a repeated-measures ANOVA. Results revealed a
similar Gender ⫻ Condition ⫻ Image interaction, F(1, 111) ⫽ 5.49,
MSE ⫽ 23.65, p ⫽ .02. For ease of presentation, only the analysis-ofdifference scores are presented.
LYDON, MENZIES-TOMAN, BURTON, AND BELL
56
in constructive behaviors (voice and loyalty) versus destructive
behaviors (exit and neglect) was measured for each of the four
scenarios. Accommodation was computed (as in Wieselquist, Rusbult, Foster, & Agnew, 1999) by subtracting the tendency to respond
destructively (exit and neglect) from the tendency to respond constructively (voice and loyalty), with the scale ranging from ⫺20 to 20.
Commitment. This was assessed with a single item whereby the
participant rated his response to the question “How committed are you
to your relationship?” on a 5-point scale (1 ⫽ not very and 5 ⫽ very).
Debriefing. Given the nature of the study, we gave a great deal
of attention and care to the debriefing. First, participants were
asked to write about their thoughts and any concerns or questions
they had about the experiment. Second, in a face-to-face debriefing
interview, the experimenter used a funneled questioning technique
to gradually probe for suspicion. Finally, the experimenter addressed concerns about the possible residual effect of the experiment on the participant and his relationship. The experimenter
explained that laboratory situations at times prompt participants to
think about certain aspects of their relationships and their partners,
rather than other aspects, and that the experimental situation is
likely to elicit thoughts and feelings that are not representative of
the relationship as a whole and are consequently not a good basis
for making relationship judgments.
Results
A 2 (Confederate: available vs. unavailable) ⫻ 2 (Transgression:
mild vs. severe) repeated-measures ANOVA was performed on accommodation to mild and severe partner transgressions. The main
effect for transgression was significant, F(1, 58) ⫽ 1.62, p ⬍ .001,
confirming the distinction between the severity of the transgressions.
We also obtained our hypothesized main effect for the manipulation,
F(1, 58) ⫽ 4.62, r ⫽ .27, p ⬍ .05. However, these two main effects
were qualified by a Transgression ⫻ Availability interaction, F(1,
58) ⫽ 8.61, p ⬍ .01. As can be seen in Table 1, the effect of the
availability manipulation was highly significant for less severe transgressions, t(58) ⫽ 4.90, r ⫽ .54, p ⬍ .01, and even more so for the
severe transgressions, t(58) ⫽ 9.04, r ⫽ .76, p ⬍ .01.
Given that we employed more than one confederate, we also tested
for differences in the effects of the different confederates. Results
indicated that there were no significant differences in accommodation
as a function of confederate, F(1, 56) ⫽ 2.80, ns, and that the
individual confederate did not qualify the main effects or the interaction reported above, Fs ⬍ 1. In addition, there were no differences
between experimental conditions on the demographic variables of
age, relationship length, or the single-item commitment measure as a
function of the manipulation (ts ⬍ 1.01).
Table 1
Mean Accommodation Scores in Study 3 by Threat Condition
and Severity of Transgression
Alternative
Transgression
Mild
Severe
Available
Unavailable
2.56
⫺2.95
4.97
1.50
Note. Higher scores mean greater willingness to accommodate.
Study 4
Having shown that the induction of a real-life relationship threat
(the availability of an attractive alternative dating partner) does, as
theories of commitment (e.g., Levinger, 1976; Rusbult & Buunk,
1993) would suggest, decrease the tendency to enhance and protect
intimate relationships for men, we aimed to show that this would
not hold true for women. Because of women’s relational selfconstrual, one might expect that situations are experienced in terms
of their implications not only for the self but also for the relationship. In this study, we sought to examine our hypothesis that
because interactions with attractive and available members of the
opposite sex are experienced by women as threats to their relationship (Study 1), such interactions will increase commitmentmotivated responses (in this case, accommodation).
In this study, we also explored possible differences in the
warmth and intimacy versus power and dominance of the alternative. Early accounts suggested that dominance in an alternative
may lower women’s evaluations of their partners (Kenrick et al.,
1994). More recent research suggests that warmth may be more
appealing than status for short-term mating (Fletcher et al., 2004),
and when forced to prioritize, women give priority to warmth for
potential long-term mates (Li & Kenrick, 2006). Therefore, we
manipulated the presentation of the confederate as either high in
power and dominance but low in warmth and intimacy or high in
warmth and intimacy but low in power and dominance. Finally, as
an added refinement, we assessed and statistically controlled for
participant attractiveness as a potential correlate of participant’s
attraction to the confederate.
Method
Participants
Fifty-eight female participants who were all currently involved
in a heterosexual romantic relationship were recruited from the
McGill University campus to take part in what was purported to be
an interpersonal relationships study. Again, the recruitment process was such that participants believed that the study was open to
both men and women who were either single or currently involved
in a relationship. Participants were, on average, 19 years of age
(SD ⫽ 2.11), were involved in a romantic relationship for a median
length of 13.5 months (SD ⫽ 17.6), and were compensated with
either course credit for an introductory psychology class or $5.
Participants were randomly assigned to one of three conditions
whereby 13 interacted with an attractive and available confederate
of the opposite sex who exhibited high dominance (power/
dominance threat condition), 21 interacted with an attractive and
available confederate of the opposite sex who exhibited high
warmth (intimacy/warmth threat condition), and 21 interacted with
an attractive but unavailable confederate of the opposite sex (control condition). The data of 3 participants were omitted from the
study because of suspicion: 2 in the available– dominant condition
and 1 in the available–warm condition.
Procedure
The participant and a confederate (posing as another participant
scheduled for the same time slot) entered the laboratory and were
asked to sign a letter of informed consent. As before, we manip-
IF–THENS AND THE AVAILABILITY OF ALTERNATIVES
ulated experimental condition by having the experimenter ask a
diagnostic relationship-status question of the confederate. Once
again, the experimenter left the participant and the confederate
alone together, under the guise of needing to make additional
copies of the questionnaire.
In the experimenter’s absence, the confederate again either
proceeded to engage the participant in a scripted conversation
(high-power/dominance and high-intimacy/warmth threat conditions) or avoid any conversation that might be initiated by the
participant (control/unavailable condition). After a short while, the
experimenter returned, and once the participant was separated
from the confederate, questionnaires were distributed. Again, accommodation was assessed immediately, and the single-item measure of commitment was embedded in a demographic-information
survey at the end of the experimental session. We included a
manipulation check to ensure that both power/dominance and
intimacy/warmth had been manipulated successfully (a coding
error resulted in missing data on the manipulation check for 14
participants), and the attractiveness of each participant was rated
by both the experimenter and the confederate so that it could later
be used as a control variable.
Materials
Manipulation of high power/dominance and high intimacy/
warmth. In both of the threat conditions, the confederate was
presented as single/available. The experimenter said “I’m sorry,
but I have a piece of information missing—are you in a relationship?” In both conditions, the confederate was to sustain eye
contact, run his hand through his hair at some point, and present
himself as a medical student. For the high-power/dominance threat
condition, the confederate said that he was studying medicine
because he loved research and that he was working toward an
MD/PhD in neurochemistry. He said “I’m going to specialize in
neurosurgery. It’s a tough field but I know I’ll be good at it.” He
was trained in terms of body language to sit leaning back, with legs
apart. He was to direct conversation, being polite but taking charge
of the conversation. For the high-intimacy/warmth threat condition, the confederate said that he was studying medicine and stated
the following: “Because I love kids, I’ve decided to go into
pediatrics. I’m going to specialize in pediatric oncology. It’s a
tough field but I know it’ll be really rewarding.” He was trained in
terms of body language to lean forward, prop his head in his hands,
and nod a lot to affirm the participant’s statements.
Accommodation. This was assessed and calculated in the same
manner as in the previous study.
Commitment. As in the previous study, commitment was assessed with a single-item measure.
Manipulation checks. Participants were asked to rate the confederate’s degree of attractiveness from 0 ⫽ very unattractive to
10 ⫽ very attractive, dominance from 0 ⫽ submissive to 10 ⫽
dominant, and warmth from 0 ⫽ cold to 10 ⫽ warm. The attractiveness of participants was also rated on this same 11-point scale
by the experimenter and the confederate.
Results
Manipulation Checks
First, we examined participants’ ratings of the attractiveness,
dominance, and warmth of the confederate. One-way, three-group
57
ANOVAs were performed, comparing responses in the unavailable, available– dominant, and available–warm conditions. There
were no between-group differences for overall attractiveness of the
confederate as a function of condition, F(2, 38) ⫽ 2.31, ns,
indicating that the availability manipulation did not alter perceptions of attractiveness (the confederate was selected for the experiment because he was seen as highly attractive). However, as
expected, there were main effects for dominance, F(2, 39) ⫽ 6.13,
p ⬍ .01, and for warmth, F(2, 39) ⫽ 23.52, p ⬍ .01. Participants
rated the confederate as more dominant in the dominant condition
(M ⫽ 7.67; SD ⫽ 1.09) than in the unavailable (M ⫽ 5.81; SD ⫽
1.49) or available–warm conditions (M ⫽ 5.76; SD ⫽ 1.77).
Conversely, participants rated the confederate as warmer in the
warmth condition (M ⫽ 8.01; SD ⫽ 1.39) than in the unavailable
(M ⫽ 4.90; SD ⫽ 1.15) or available– dominant conditions (M ⫽
4.75; SD ⫽ 1.67).
Accommodation
A 3 (Confederate: unavailable vs. available– dominant vs. available–warm) ⫻ 2 (Transgression: mild vs. severe) repeated-measures
ANOVA was performed on accommodation to mild and severe
partner transgressions. The main effect for transgression was significant, F(1, 52) ⫽71.4, p ⬍ .001, replicating the distinction between the
severity of the transgressions. We also obtained our hypothesized
main effect for the manipulation, F(2, 52) ⫽ 3.52, r ⫽ .25, p ⬍ .05.
These two main effects were not qualified by a Transgression ⫻
Availability interaction, F ⬍ 1. A comparison of the two available
conditions versus the unavailable condition was highly significant,
t(52) ⫽ 2.63, r ⫽ .34, p ⬍ .01. Accommodation was greater in the
two available conditions than in the unavailable condition (M ⫽
⫺3.71; SD ⫽ 5.36), but there was no difference between the
available– dominant (M ⫽ 0.44; SD ⫽ 5.35) and available–warm
conditions (M ⫽ 0.01; SD ⫽ 5.36).
Participants in the two threat conditions reported less commitment on the one-item measure (Ms ⫽ 3.90 and 3.62, respectively;
SDs ⫽ 0.97 and 1.50, respectively) than did individuals in the
unavailable condition (M ⫽ 4.62; SD ⫽ 0.80), F(2, 51) ⫽ 4.19,
p ⬍ .05, indicating that the threat manipulation challenged felt
commitment. One could have imagined the opposite patterns of
results, with participants in the threat conditions immediately
defending by reporting higher commitment. Controlling for commitment did not reduce the effect of the threat manipulation on
accommodation. Instead, the effect was somewhat stronger, F(2,
50) ⫽ 5.01, r ⫽ .30, p ⬍ .02.
We also obtained ratings of the perceived attractiveness of the
participants from the experimenter and confederate. A one-way
ANOVA revealed, unexpectedly, that participants in the unavailable condition were perceived as relatively less attractive (M ⫽
5.82; SD ⫽ 1.11) than those in the available– dominant (M ⫽ 6.62;
SD ⫽ 1.02) and available–warm (M ⫽ 6.69; SD ⫽ 1.08) conditions. Therefore, we reanalyzed the accommodation data, treating
participants’ attractiveness as a covariate. The effect of the manipulation was actually slightly stronger in the ANCOVA, F(2,
51) ⫽ 4.72, r ⫽ .29, p ⬍ .02.
Study 5
Having shown the hypothesized association between the availability of the attractive alternative and accommodation for women,
LYDON, MENZIES-TOMAN, BURTON, AND BELL
58
we sought to rule out an alternative explanation for our findings.
That is, we sought to rule out the possibility that increases in
accommodation on the part of women, when faced with the attractive alternative, were merely the byproduct of feelings of guilt
aroused by their attraction to the alternative. Previous research has
shown that “when people experience guilt, they typically feel
regret regarding their transgression, are empathic toward those
they have hurt, and try to correct the situation through apology and
reparation” (Leary, 2007, p. 333).
In this study, we also streamlined the design, dropping the
warmth-versus-dominance manipulation because we did not find
significant differences between these conditions and, more important, because the streamlined design for Study 5 was more similar
to that of Study 3, thereby facilitating a cross-study meta-analytic
comparison of the effect of our availability manipulation on men
versus women. We also added a one-item premeasure of commitment for greater statistical control and used a different male
confederate for replication purposes.
tion) or avoided any conversation that might be initiated by the
participant (control/unavailable condition). After a short while, the
experimenter returned, and once the participant was separated
from the confederate, the questionnaires were distributed. In this
study, the participants filled out the emotion measure before accommodation was assessed.
Materials
Emotions scale. This was assessed with adjectives from the
Differential Emotions Scale (Izard, 1977). Shame, guilt, embarrassment, happiness, surprise, and interest were assessed using two
adjectives that are representative of each emotion. These adjectives
were presented in alphabetical order and were rated on a 5-point
scale (1 ⫽ not at all and 5 ⫽ very much).
Accommodation. This was assessed and calculated in the same
manner as in the previous studies.
Results
Method
Participants
Fifty-nine female participants who were all currently involved
in a heterosexual romantic relationship were recruited from the
McGill University campus to take part in what was purported to be
an interpersonal relationships study. Again, the recruitment process was such that participants believed that the study was open to
both men and women who were either single or currently involved
in a relationship. Seven participants reported some suspicion, and
their data were omitted from the study. Participants were, on
average, 20 years of age (SD ⫽ 1.75), were involved in a romantic
relationship for a median length of 18 months (SD ⫽ 17.1), and
were compensated with $5. Participants were again randomly
assigned to one of two conditions: 26 individuals interacted with
an attractive and available confederate of the opposite sex, and 26
interacted with an attractive but unavailable confederate of the
opposite sex (control condition).
Procedure
First, 1–2 weeks prior to the experimental session, participants
were telephoned and told that the experimenters were “looking for
both single people and those in relationships to fill out a simple
questionnaire.” This allowed us to confirm relationship status and
legitimize the confederate as single. It also set up a question on the
telephone: “Would you say that you are not at all committed,
slightly committed, moderately committed, very committed, or
totally committed to your current relationship?”
Later, in the laboratory, the participant and a confederate (posing as
another participant scheduled for the same time slot) entered the lab
and were asked to sign a letter of informed consent. As before, the
experimental conditions were manipulated with a diagnostic
relationship-status question asked of the confederate by the female
experimenter. In this study, to decrease the likelihood of suspicion, the
experimenter left the room under the guise of searching for a lost
participant who was scheduled for that same study.
In the experimenter’s absence, the confederate again either
engaged the participant in a scripted conversation (threat condi-
Because half the sample reported five out of five on the oneitem premeasure of commitment, we dichotomized participants
into two commitment groups, with five being high and less than
five being low. We then conducted a 2 (Commitment: high vs.
low) ⫻ 2 (Confederate: available vs. unavailable) ⫻ 2 (Transgression: mild vs. severe) repeated-measures ANCOVA on accommodation with ratings of the participants’ attractiveness as a covariate.
The sole statistically significant effect was the main effect for the
experimental manipulation, F(1, 47) ⫽ 4.75, r ⫽ .30, p ⬍ .05.
Women in the available-confederate condition reported greater
willingness to accommodate (M ⫽ 1.73; SD ⫽ 8.92) than did
women in the unavailable-confederate condition (M ⫽ ⫺3.70;
SD ⫽ 8.57). The covariate for participant’s attractiveness was not
significant (F ⬍ 1). Also, the dichotomized premeasure of commitment was not significant, F(1, 47) ⫽ 1.3, ns, although the
means were in the expected direction (M ⫽ 0.37 for high commitment and M ⫽ ⫺2.33 for low commitment).
The measure of guilt from the emotion scale was positively
associated with accommodation across conditions, r(51) ⫽ .29,
p ⬍ .05. However, there were no significant differences in guilt
between experimental conditions (F ⬍ 1), and when guilt was
treated as a covariate, it did not reduce the main effect of the
manipulation.
Cross-Study Comparison
Because Study 5 with female participants was very similar to Study
3 with male participants, we compared the effect sizes for the manipulation of the availability of attractive alternatives for men and
women, respectively. Using the Fisher Z transformation of the two r
effect sizes resulted in a highly significant difference between the two
studies, Z ⫽ 3.04, p ⬍ .01. For further comparison, we calculated the
accommodation scores of participants in the available condition in
Studies 3–5, relative to the unavailable, baseline condition for each
study. For Study 4, we combined the scores for the two availablealternative conditions. As seen in Figure 1, men in Study 3 accommodated less after interacting with the available alternative, whereas
women in Studies 4 and 5 accommodated more after interacting with
the available alternative.
IF–THENS AND THE AVAILABILITY OF ALTERNATIVES
Mean difference in accommodation
between the threat and control
conditions
6
5
4
3
2
Men in Study 3
Women in Study 4
Women in Study 5
1
0
-1
-2
-3
-4
Studies 3-5
Figure 1. Mean differences in accommodation between the threat and
control conditions for Studies 3–5.
Study 6
After establishing in Studies 4 and 5 that the presence of an
available attractive alternative leads women to increase their willingness to accommodate their partners’ transgressions, we sought
to examine the cognitive processes that may be implicated in these
relationship-maintenance responses. Our primary candidate, as
outlined in the introduction and in Study 2, is threat elicited by the
attractive alternative. If we are correct that threat contributes
significantly to the psychological process underlying our obtained
experimental effects, then the accessibility of threat should only be
associated with accommodation in the experimental condition. In
a control condition, the variability in threat accessibility should be
irrelevant to accommodation responses (Spencer, Zanna, & Fong,
2006).
A second possible process is commitment accessibility. We
know that self-reported commitment is associated with accommodation in general, so one might expect that the cognitive accessibility of commitment should also be associated with accommodation across conditions (Etcheverry & Le, 2005). However, we
explored the possibility that commitment accessibility may be
more strongly linked to accommodation in a relationship-threat
context.
In Study 6, following the encounter with the attractive alternative, participants completed a lexical decision task that permitted
the examination of the cognitive accessibility of the constructs of
threat and commitment. We theorized that women’s ability to
regulate threat (decreased accessibility of threat words) would be
positively associated with accommodation. Moreover, we expected that implicit commitment (greater accessibility of commitment words) would predict accommodation above and beyond
explicit self-reported commitment. Also in Study 6, we included a
no-confederate control group that permitted the comparison between women under conditions of high relationship threat and
those under neutral conditions.
Method
Participants
Forty-one female participants who were all currently involved in
a heterosexual romantic relationship were recruited from the
59
McGill University campus to take part in what was purported to be
a social situations and cognitive processes study. Again, the recruitment process was such that participants believed that the study
was open to individuals who were either single or currently involved in a relationship. Participants were, on average, 19.4 years
of age (SD ⫽ 1.96) and had been involved in a romantic relationship for a mean length of 16 months (SD ⫽ 15.2). Participants
were compensated either with course credit for an introductory
psychology class or with $5. These participants were randomly
assigned to conditions whereby 16 individuals interacted with an
attractive and available confederate of the opposite sex and 25
individuals did not interact with a confederate (control/no-threat
condition).
Procedure
Prior to participation in the experiment, individuals were contacted by telephone and were asked to respond to a relationship
survey for a study that was ostensibly unrelated to the present
investigation. Participants were then contacted approximately 1–2
weeks later by a different experimenter to schedule their appointment for this study.
In this study, the participant sat alone in a waiting room while
the experimenter left to prepare the computers for the laboratory
session. In the threat condition, the confederate arrived during the
experimenter’s absence, acting the part of another participant
scheduled for the same time slot, engaged the participant in the
same scripted conversation as in the previous studies, with one
exception: The confederate himself revealed his relationship status
as available by mentioning that he had only just moved to the city
and did not have a girlfriend. The experimenter then returned,
acknowledged the confederate’s arrival as if he were a second
participant, and asked the true participant to accompany her to the
computer room where the study was to take place. In the control/
nonthreat condition, the experimenter returned after 2 min (during
which time no confederate had interacted with the participant). All
participants then completed a lexical decision task, the accommodation measure, and again completed the relationship survey.
Materials
Commitment. A 14-item relationship-attitudes scale administered by phone 1 or 2 weeks prior to the study included the
six-item Assessment of Relationship Commitment (constructed
and used originally by Gagné & Lydon, 2003), in which participants are asked the extent to which they feel committed to,
attached to, devoted to, loyal to, dedicated to, and invested in their
relationship. These items were scored on a 5-point scale (1 ⫽ not
at all and 5 ⫽ extremely). Four participants did not complete this
premeasure.
Lexical decision task. In this task, participants were instructed
to decide whether strings of letters constituted either words or
nonwords by pressing keys labeled “word” and “non-word” on the
keyboard as quickly and as accurately as possible. The elapsed
time between the presentation of the stimulus and the participant’s
response was measured in milliseconds and was used as an index
of construct accessibility whereby the more accessible a construct
was, the shorter was the response latency. Participants completed
11 practice trials, followed by 90 test trials. The test trials con-
LYDON, MENZIES-TOMAN, BURTON, AND BELL
60
sisted of 45 words, of which 8 were prototypical of the construct
of commitment, 5 were related to the notion of threat, and 32 had
either a positive valence or a neutral valence. The remaining 45
items were nonwords in that they had letters missing or letters out
of order. The words representing commitment were devotion,
attachment, sacrifice, protectiveness, commitment, dependency,
loyalty, and security and were selected on the basis of the work of
Aron and Westbay (1996) and Fehr (1988) that demonstrated that
such words are prototypic of the concept of commitment. Words of
positive valence, taken from the Affect Balance Scale (Derogatis,
1975), were included to control for the inherent positivity of
commitment-related words. Threat-related words included those
that we generated to be highly representative of the concept of
threat and consisted of the following: danger, threat, trouble,
beware, and tempting. The remaining words were neutral words
that were used as a control for within-participant baseline reaction
times. We computed measures of commitment and threat accessibility by capping reaction times at 3,000 ms, performing a logarithmic transformation of the data, and then computing residual
scores for each, controlling for reaction times to neutral words, and
positive words in the case of commitment (Fazio, 1990).
Accommodation. This was assessed and calculated in the same
manner as in the previous studies.
Results
Preliminary Analyses
First, we performed a 2 (Condition: threat vs. control) ⫻ 2
(Scenario: mild vs. severe) repeated-measures ANCOVA with the
explicit premeasure of commitment entered as a covariate. The
covariate was significant, F(1, 34) ⫽ 4.02, p ⫽ .053, but it also
interacted somewhat with the severity of the scenario, F(1, 34) ⫽
2.95, p ⬍ .10, as the explicit measure tended to correlate more with
accommodation to the milder transgressions.
Severity of the transgression also interacted with the experimental manipulation, F(1, 34) ⫽ 4.66, p ⬍ .05, such that for milder
transgressions, the presence of the available alternative increased
individuals’ willingness to accommodate their partners’ transgression (M ⫽ .41) compared with those individuals in the noconfederate control group (M ⫽ ⫺.26), t(34) ⫽ 2.58, p ⬍ .05.
To examine the effects of the measures of the accessibility of
commitment and threat, we then conducted a regression analysis
on total accommodation scores by first standardizing scores for the
mild and severe transgressions and averaging these values. The
predictor variables were self-reported commitment, the experimental manipulation, the accessibility of commitment, the accessibility
of threat, and the interactions between the accessibility measures
and the experimental manipulation. The total model accounted for
40% of the variance, (R ⫽ .63), F(7, 29) ⫽ 2.72, p ⬍ .05. The
accessibility of commitment was associated with accommodation
in general (r ⫽ ⫺.36, ␤ ⫽ ⫺.39, p ⬍ .05), such that the more that
commitment was cognitively accessible, the more individuals were
willing to accommodate their partners’ transgressions. This, however, did not interact with the manipulation ( p ⫽ .49). The accessibility of threat did interact with the manipulation (␤ ⫽ .45, p ⬍
.05). Whereas in the control condition, the accessibility of threat
was not associated with accommodation, r(39) ⫽ .12, in the threat
condition, it was predictive of accommodation (r ⫽ .47, p ⬍ .05)
such that the dampened (decreased) accessibility of the concept of
threat was associated with individuals’ greater willingness to accommodate. Finally, the self-reported measure of commitment
interacted with the manipulation (␤ ⫽ ⫺2.58, p ⫽ .05) such that
self-reported, premeasured commitment was associated with accommodation in the control condition (r ⫽ .52, p ⬍ .01), but it was
not associated with accommodation in the threat condition (r ⫽
.12). Consistent with the repeated-measures ANCOVA, regression
results were stronger and significant for the milder transgression
than for the more severe transgression, although the model accounted for greater explanatory variance when using responses to
both sets of transgressions in a total score.
Study 7
One interpretation of the previous six studies is that men are
unwilling to ward off temptation. We do not subscribe to this.
Instead, we theorize that the differences between men and women
are due to differences in encodings and relationship-regulatory
strategies that are quickly and easily activated in response to the
encoding of the situation as a threat. In theory, if men were
equipped with the if–then contingency that is chronically accessible for women, then men would respond to a threat prime with a
relationship-protective response.
To test this idea, we drew on theory and research concerning
implementation intentions, whereby a person in a single act of
mental will states “When I am in situation X, then I will do Y.” We
hypothesized that randomly assigning males to an implementationintentions condition in which they state “When I am approached
by the attractive girl, I will then _____ to defend and protect my
relationship” would increase their tendency to engage in subsequent relationship-maintenance behavior.
We had to then find a paradigm different from that of Studies
4 – 6 to examine relationship protection in response to threat. We
reasoned that if participants had an interaction with an attractive
alternative after forming an implementation intention, there would
have been a great deal of demand in the experiment, and most
participants would have detected our purpose. Therefore, we instead had participants engage in a number of perception tasks,
including the viewing and manipulating of objects that included an
image of an attractive person of the opposite sex. In Study 2, we
found that women, but not men, moved the image of the attractive
alternative further away from themselves than other images when
primed to think about their current romantic relationship. In addition to this distancing task, we also designed a second task to
assess a tendency to not approach an attractive image. Participants
had to carry a balloon into one of four rooms in a virtual environment, two of which had been primed with the image of the
attractive alternative during an earlier exploration of the environment. In Study 7, all participants received a nonevaluative relationship prime (“imagine that your partner is away for the weekend
. . .”). We hypothesized that we would replicate the distancing
effect from Study 2 in the control condition but that the gender
difference would be reduced by having men form implementation
intentions. Moreover, we predicted the same pattern of results for
the balloon-placement task—that women in general but only men
in the implementation-intention condition would avoid the rooms
primed with the attractive alternative.
IF–THENS AND THE AVAILABILITY OF ALTERNATIVES
Method
Participants
Eighty participants (40 male and 40 female) who were all
currently involved in a heterosexual romantic relationship were
recruited from the McGill University campus to take part in a
study purported to be on the effects of cognitive tasks on one’s
experience in virtual reality. The recruitment process was such that
participants believed that the study was open to individuals who
were either single or currently involved in a relationship. In fact, 7
male and 2 female participants were not dating at the time of their
experimental session, and their data were therefore discarded.
Also, 1 participant was deleted because of suspicion. Participants
were, on average, 19.7 years of age and had been involved in a
romantic relationship for 17 months and were compensated with
$10 or a movie pass. Participants were randomly assigned to
conditions whereby 35 individuals formed the intention to defend
their relationships (relationship-implementation-intention/
treatment condition) and 35 individuals formed the intention to
focus while studying (academic-implementation-intention/control
condition).
Procedure
Having signed a consent form, participants received written
instructions about a series of cognitive and perceptual tasks and
then received instructions orally from the experimenter. Participants were told that they could choose one of five envelopes, each
one containing a different scenario to read and visualize. In truth,
all of the five envelopes contained the same scenario. In the
experimental condition, the scenario described the participant’s
partner being away for the weekend, the participant spending a
night out on the town with friends, and the participant being
approached by an attractive alternative (a single and attractive
member of the opposite sex who has taken a liking to the participant). The scenario concluded with instructions to form a
relationship-defending implementation intention. Individuals in
the control group also received a scenario about their dating
partners leaving for the weekend; however, instead of visualizing
a Friday evening out with friends and being approached by an
attractive alternative, those in the control condition were instructed
to visualize a Saturday afternoon out with friends and thinking of
an academic goal. The purpose of this procedure was to have the
participants in both conditions form an implementation intention
so that we would be able to control for the use of cognitive
resources that are inherent in forming an implementation intention.
We also made relationship status salient in both conditions. Participants then completed a series of computer tasks, including the
dependent measures of avoiding versus approaching an image of
an attractive person of the opposite sex.
Materials
Manipulation of implementation intentions. Implementation
intentions were manipulated through instructions to form either a
relationship-defending implementation intention (experimental
condition) or an academic-goal implementation intention (control
condition). After imagining being approached by the attractive
alternative, participants were provided with either of the following:
61
“When the guy/girl approaches, I will ____________ to protect my
relationship,” or “When I get distracted while studying, I will
____________ to regain my focus.”
Distancing task. Distancing from an attractive alternative, a
form of avoidance, was measured using a task in which participants manipulated the image of an attractive alternative in virtual
space. Eight equally spaced images depicting an attractive alternative and various neutral images were presented on a computer
monitor. Participants were stationary but could rotate on a vertical
axis to alter their own perspective to view each of the images in
turn. In addition, they could use the arrow keys to adjust the
distance of each image, bringing it closer or pushing it further
away. Participants were simply instructed to arrange the pictures in
whatever configuration satisfied them. Once participants completed their arrangement, the placement of the images was recorded in virtual units. The variable for avoidance of the attractive
alternative was then calculated by subtracting the distance at which
the image of the alternative was placed relative to the average
distance at which the neutral images were placed.
Balloon-placement task. Participants were placed in a large
virtual lobby with a table in the center and four rooms leading off
one end of the lobby. Participants were asked to thoroughly explore each of four rooms, using arrow keys on the keyboard to
direct their navigation through the virtual environment. In two of
these rooms (randomly selected by the computer program), the
image of an attractive person of the opposite sex was flashed on
the fore of the screen for 10 ms, followed immediately by a retinal
interruption image and a neutral mask for another 20 ms. Because
they flashed on the fore of the screen, the images were detached
from the animation, so the image appeared in a consistent, stationary position slightly off the center of the screen for all participants,
regardless of the participant’s movement or perspective. In the
neutral rooms, control images were flashed on the back wall.
Participants were not able to detect images of people. After the
exploration of the rooms, participants returned to a large hall with
a small table in the center; a balloon appeared on the table, and a
robotic arm emerged. Participants were instructed to grasp the
balloon, lift it from the table, and carry it to a room.
Results
We performed two sets of analyses to examine the hypothesis
that men would differ from women in their approach versus
avoidance of alternatives but that this difference would be lessened
by having men form relationship-implementation intentions. First,
we conducted a 2 (Gender: male vs. female) ⫻ 2 (Condition:
experimental vs. control) ⫻ 2 (Image: attractive alternative vs.
control) repeated-measures ANOVA of the distancing task. This
produced a significant Gender ⫻ Image interaction, F(1, 66) ⫽
5.82, p ⬍ .05. Women avoided the target image, t(66) ⫽ 2.08, p ⬍
.05, whereas men did not, t ⫽ ⫺0.57. There were no main effects
or interactions for the relationship-implementation-intentions manipulation.
The second set of analyses concerned the balloon-placement
task. Thirty-six of the 70 participants placed the balloon in a room
primed with the attractive alternative, and this did not differ from
chance. There also was no main effect of gender or experimental
condition on balloon-placement behavior, ␹2 ⬍ 1. However, room
selection differed for men in the relationship-implementation-
62
LYDON, MENZIES-TOMAN, BURTON, AND BELL
intentions condition compared with men in the control condition,
␹2(1, N ⫽ 32) ⫽ 4.57, p ⬍ .05. Specifically, men in the experimental condition avoided the primed room (75%), ␹2(1, N ⫽
16) ⫽ 4.0, N ⬍ .05, and men in the control condition did not
(38.5%), ␹2(1, N ⫽ 17) ⫽ 1.00, ns. Women were random in their
room-selection behavior, with 11 of 19 in each condition going to
the primed room, ␹2 ⬍ 1 across and within conditions for women.
Across the two dependent measures, we found evidence for our
hypothesis that women in general and men primed with implementation intentions would evidence relationship maintenance in
their reactions to attractive alternatives. Unexpectedly, the results
for women were obtained on one dependent measure, the distancing task, and the results for men were obtained on the other
dependent measure, the balloon task. One possible explanation is
that the distancing task involves the avoidance of an attractive
other, whereas the balloon task involves inhibiting the approach of
an attractive other (not taking the balloon to the room). The
dynamic of responses to attractive alternatives may be more of
women avoiding attractive alternatives and men not seeking attractive alternatives, but this possible differential response requires
further research.
General Discussion
A series of seven controlled experiments provided evidence of
the causal effects of the availability of an attractive alternative on
relationship-maintenance processes. Consistent with theories of
commitment, greater availability of a potential alternative dating
partner decreased accommodation. However, this was only true for
men. Women responded to the experimental manipulation in quite
the opposite way— by increasing their willingness to accommodate their partner’s transgressions. Merely imagining an interaction
with an attractive member of the opposite sex was sufficient to
activate women’s thoughts of commitment and threat, whereas for
men, the same manipulation did not increase the activation of
commitment and threat. Women’s ability to successfully regulate
this threat activation when faced with the availability of the alternative led to greater accommodation. Finally, men’s propensity to
approach an attractive alternative was dampened when they were
trained to form the contingency of “if attractive other approaches,
then protect the relationship.”
Serving as an environmental cue, an attractive alternative elicited very different responses from men and women. We believe
that women have available in memory a chronic if–then contingency, such that “if an attractive alternative approaches, then I will
defend the relationship.” This leads to the ease with which they
engage in processes that protect the relationship. Although men in
dating relationships may not have this contingency chronically
accessible, they may be capable of forming such a contingency and
applying the knowledge structure appropriately in a given context
when such contingencies are made more accessible through priming.
The situational trigger in these studies was the availability of an
attractive alternative, which is important in its own right, as all
major theories of relationship commitment identify the availability
of alternatives as an essential feature of their models. However,
Holmes (2002) suggested that a psychology of situations should
move beyond the concrete situation and consider what that situation represents in terms of a latent theoretical structure. In this
case, the availability of alternatives represents an exemplar of the
class of relationship threats. Thus, the contingency can be abstracted to “If my relationship is threatened, then I will defend it.”
Framed in this way, we may begin to develop a deeper analysis of
the obtained gender differences and better understand them in
terms of basic principles of interpersonal motivation and situations. Therefore, one explanation for the gender difference in
response to alternatives may be that the latent theoretical structure
activated by this particular situation is different for men and
women. As we saw in Study 1, men are less likely to construe the
attractive alternative as a relationship threat. For relationshipmaintenance behaviors to be activated via the link between relationship threat and potential responses to such threats, the situation
must first be construed as one that would require such a response.
In addition, individuals can have different relationship signatures
in response to interpersonal situations, and these differences may
covary with gender.
Decomposing the contingency, we can ask the following: (a)
What influences whether the given if situation is construed as a
relationship threat— one requiring the activation of a relationship
maintenance response? (b) What may moderate the strength of the
association between the if and then response? (c) What may
influence the particular response elicited by the threat?
An explanation for the gender difference in the construal of an
attractive alternative as a relationship threat is that women have
been socialized to be wary of the advances of attractive men and
to take care to protect their relationships because they highly value
marriage. Women have been taught both explicitly and implicitly
that they are the gatekeepers for sexual activity and relationships
(Symons, 1979). As a result, they may have learned to be careful
when an attractive alternative approaches—and not to discard a
good current relationship in favor of an alternate relationship
partner.
Some of these same ideas can be understood within an evolutionary framework. Parental-investment theory (Trivers, 1972) and
subsequent sexual-strategies theory (Buss & Schmitt, 1993) expect
women to be more discriminating and restricted in their approach
to relationships because of sex differences in reproduction. In the
trade-off between good genes and good parenting, women are
expected to more frequently adopt long-term mating tactics than
short-term strategies (Gangestad & Simpson, 2000). By contrast,
men may be relatively more likely than women to seize the
opportunity for short-term mating. Alternative relationship partners should not generate threat for men as much as for women, and
consequently, the contingency would less likely be activated for
men.
In addition to general evolutionary and sociocultural factors
influencing the construal of threat, there remain more proximal
relationship properties that should also influence the construal of
the situation as a threat. An important theoretical explanation for
these gender differences is that gender is confounded with selfconstruals (Cross et al., 2000, 2002). Women, more than men, are
likely to define themselves in terms of their relationships and to
adopt a relationally interdependent self-construal. This difference
has been suggested as an explanation for gender differences in
relationship illusions, whereby women in dating relationships see
their partners more positively than the partners see themselves, but
men in dating relationships generally do not see their partners
more positively than the partners see themselves (Gagné & Lydon,
IF–THENS AND THE AVAILABILITY OF ALTERNATIVES
2003). Moreover, recent research suggests that because of gender
differences in relational identities, women will experience relationship threats as threats to the self (Burton & Lydon, 2004).
Therefore, women in the current studies may be engaging in
processes that protect their relationships because the relationship
represents their own self-interest.
Although there are gender differences in relational selfconstruals, there is also within-gender variation, with some men
having more relational identities than others. Further, even men
who may not be disposed to define themselves in terms of their
relationships may, during the course of a specific intimate relationship, come to incorporate that one relationship into their identity. From a motivated-cognition perspective, the strength of the
relational identity should influence attention to threats and the
construal of the situation as a threat. We expect that individual
differences in relational self-construals and priming such selfconstruals should predict threat activation and relationshipmaintenance responses.
The connection from the if to the then response is also likely
influenced by motivation and commitment, as well as relational
identities. Individuals may implicitly ask themselves, “Is it worth
responding to the threat by engaging in some sort of relationshipmaintenance response?” Even if one does experience the threat, it
could elicit capitulation rather than relationship protection. Previous research suggests that one needs to calibrate the level of threat
with the level of relationship commitment to predict a relationshipmaintenance response. When the level of threat exceeds one’s
commitment level, then one is likely to succumb to the threat.
However, when the level of threat is optimally calibrated with
commitment (i.e., neither too trivial nor too substantial), then one
is likely to engage a response (Lydon et al., 1999). That is,
commitment should moderate the if–then contingency within a
given situation.
The current research expands on the calibration framework by
examining both explicit and implicit reports of commitment.
Whereas explicit, or self-reported, commitment predicted accommodation in the control condition but not the threat condition,
implicit commitment predicted accommodation across conditions.
This adds credence to the notion that the confederate presented a
subtle, implicit threat that was insensitive to explicit, conscious
commitment. We expect that there is a wide range of relationship
threats that operate outside of an individual’s conscious awareness
and that these are more contingent upon implicit commitment than
on explicit commitment. Moreover, some situations demand quick,
effortless relationship-maintenance responses, sometimes in the
face of fatigue or distraction. Implicit commitment may influence
such situations more strongly than explicit commitment, just as
implicit measures of prejudice predict spontaneous nonverbal behavior better than do explicit measures (Dovidio, Kawakami, &
Gaertner, 2002).
Finally, in addition to the if situation and the connection between the situation and the response, there is the question of what
type of response will be elicited. In the current studies, we focused
on the general propensity to tolerate partner transgressions as a
way to operationalize relationship protection. Although we did not
find consistent differences between more active, voice responses
and more passive, loyalty responses, following Sinclair & Fehr
(2005), future research might examine the circumstances under
which relationship threats elicit one of these more than the other.
63
When threat is cognitively activated and the motivation to
respond in some way is strong, there may be a wide array of
personal and relational responses available to an individual
(Gagné, Khan, Lydon, & To, in press). A distinction may be made
between these possible responses by considering whether the response is self-protective or relationship-protective. Research on
relational insecurities and low self-esteem suggests that some
individuals may respond to relational threats as confirmation that
they are unworthy and that the inevitable demise of the relationship has begun (Murray, Holmes, MacDonald, & Ellsworth, 1998).
This often results in self-protective strategies that undermine the
relationship. Even in terms of relationship protection, we can
imagine different types of responses. Consider, for example, if the
threat were due to an attractive person approaching one’s partner.
First, we might expect the situation to elicit threat for men more
than the current threat we created. Second, the response may vary.
Although some men might respond by engaging in more
relationship-supportive behaviors toward their partner, we might
also expect mate guarding to elicit behavior directed more toward
the threat itself.
This returns us to the distinction between the concrete situation
and the latent theoretical structure. Our set of seven studies provides strong experimental evidence regarding the concrete situation of an attractive alternative. However, it points to directions for
new research on the latent theoretical structure of “if relationship
is threatened, then defend.” Gender, relational identity, and relational experiences all likely contribute to whether a concrete
situation is construed as a relational threat. If the situation is
construed as a threat, we still need to delineate the responses that
then ensue. For example, extrapolating from the male-warrior
hypothesis (Van Vugt, De Cremer, & Janssen, 2007), one might
expect men to see other groups as threats to their group and threats
to the mating relationships they have within their group. However,
even if the other group were construed as a relationship threat, it
is a separate question as to how men would then respond to the
construed threat.
Limitations and Future Directions
Because the primary focus of this program of research was to
test the causal effects of the availability of alternatives on
commitment-related behavior, only three of the seven experiments
examined some of the underlying components implicated in the
robust gender differences we obtained on accommodation. With
this set of studies in place, it would be useful in future research to
focus more exclusively on the threat–protect response pattern,
using a variety of social cognitive methods and relationship-threat
triggers.
We also focused our efforts more on the delicate manipulation
of the independent variable and relied on self-reports of accommodation in four of the seven studies. The ability of the manipulation to account for willingness to accommodate over and above
self-reported commitment attests to the ability of the experimental
situation to elicit something more than normative responses to the
transgression scenarios. Nevertheless, the external validity of the
results would be enhanced significantly by eliciting more behavioral data, such as the readiness to communicate relationship status
to the attractive alternative. Ethically, it would seem inappropriate
to examine real-world behavior with the romantic partner in the 24
LYDON, MENZIES-TOMAN, BURTON, AND BELL
64
hr following the deceptive experimental manipulation of the kind
we employed.
We recognize that some of our studies had small sample sizes.
Fortunately, in general, the effect sizes in the lab experiments were
sufficiently large to obtain statistically significant results. However, the decreased statistical power of small samples limited our
ability to test more elaborate multivariate models. We can imagine
that individual differences in relational identities, unrestricted sociosexual orientations, and chronic attention to alternatives would
provide additional explanatory variance accounting for
commitment-related responses to relationship threats, particularly
with the availability of an attractive alternative.
Although all of our studies concerned the effects of an alternative on one’s current romantic relationship, we did not examine
whether the alternative presented a short-term mating opportunity
or a long-term mating opportunity. Men were presented with
highly attractive women who were also warm and agreeable.
Women were presented with attractive men who were high in
status (medical students) and who varied systematically in being
dominant versus warm. In this way, men and women were presented with alternatives higher in features found to appeal to both
short-term and long-term mating goals (Fletcher et al., 2004;
Kenrick et al., 1994; Li & Kenrick, 2006). Future research could
isolate these features and see whether it is the short-term mating
features of alternatives or the long-term mating features of alternatives that influence responsiveness to a current dating partner.
Finally, in Study 2, we used fully immersive virtual reality
environments, and in Study 7, we used a less immersive environment to allow individuals to explore experimenter-created environments and encounter social stimuli designed to elicit theoretically predictable behavioral responses. Future research could
enrich this type of environment and collect additional, more sensitive measures of behavioral responses to attractive alternatives,
such as time and attention directed at the alternative. More generally, we expect that this research tool could allow researchers to
study social phenomena such as the symbolic self, prejudice, and
the seeking of attachment figures under stress (Blascovich et al.,
2002).
Conclusion
Research indicates that motivation can bias evaluations. Therefore, correlations between the availability of alternatives and commitment may be due to biased attention and recall of alternatives
and/or to the influence of alternatives on commitment. Here, we
report a set of controlled laboratory experiments demonstrating the
causal effects of the availability of alternatives on commitmentrelated behavior. But as emerging theories on relational selfconstruals suggest, men and women construe the availability of
alternatives in different ways. This fits well with the broader
nomological net of evolutionary theory as it addresses gender and
mating behavior. Moreover, this set of findings begins to identify
and delineate the underlying social cognitive structures that give
rise to the relationship behavior elicited by relationally threatening
situations. From evolutionary forces, to relational identities, to
specific if–then contingencies, we see that a simple, brief interaction can be a complex situation, especially when an intimate
relationship is at stake.
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Received June 24, 2006
Revision received September 4, 2007
Accepted September 5, 2007 䡲